"Spy At Twilight" Is Eloquently Penned

Under what circumstances are we to imagine Western and Soviet intelligence services in league together? If espionage is the ultimate game of states shall the opponents be allowed to cook the rules?

Soviet intelligence officer Abramov seems to think so. "You'll see, we will cease to be the enemy; the two superpowers will unite to fight the last great religious war together. It will be religion, not communism, that will bring about Armageddon, and it will start in the Middle East when our common need for oil leaves the unholy alliance no choice."

Prophetic? Perhaps it is in some ways. It may be naive and simplistic in others. Be that as it may, it provides an able cornerstone to a superbly written novel.

This is a proper British spy story, and after all they invented the genre. It is as smartly written as anything this side of Graham Greene.

The honorable Prime Minister Toby Bayldon is a puppet of the Soviet Politburo. The bad old, post-Maggie days of Labour government and its welfare excesses have crippled Merrie Old England, and it all fits into a Moscow master plot. Alec Hillsden - you may remember him from Forbers' "The Endless Game" - is an erstwhile member of the British Secret Service. He has been exiled to atone for a murder he didn't do and certain lustful transgressions he did, back in the land of hope and glory. He is not a traitor, however, and his Russian military intelligence case officer knows it.

With the mysterious death of a small time "sleeper" agent in London, it all begins to unravel for the PM and his Moscow controller. This leaves Hillsden, now in Leningrad, the task of getting word somehow to Whitehall as to the Soviets' ultimate game plan.